Having worked with the band since 2009, Jason Carroll explained, "Previously I used a multitude of floor based LED par can fixtures to create a 'technicolor' stage look. I also had three white rectangle spandex stretchy shapes behind the band, to throw colour onto and intentionally cast tall shadows.
"But for the current tour, Annie wanted the lighting to be drastically different, with no backdrop pieces and a colour shift to mostly white light, which meant that we needed moving lights instead of LED par cans."
Thus the touring lighting package became entirely floor based, with many of the moving lights including the Spot Ones, on tipped up roadcases, giving Carroll the flexibility "to do some down positons on the band, and some up positions over the band members' heads." Four conventional Profile spots (stage left and right) - replaced in Europe by the GLP 120RZ zooms - along with two strobes on the midstage floor, and six generics (as foot lights for the four piece band) completed a simple, but highly effective set-up.
"The floor package programming was designed to look amazing even without any house systems," noted Carroll. The majority of this programming had been carried out in New York by Ben Stanton and his assistant, Jon Goldman, with Jason Carroll joining the team to provide another layer of input to the process.
While the lighting for the US tour was provided by New York-based See Factor Industries for the European leg, Colour Sound Experiment took over, having recently added a large number of Spot Ones to their own inventory.
(Jim Evans)
